Childcare and You

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Strengthen Your Eyes With Tratak Yoga

As you get older, your eyes get tired soon and your vision starts deteriorating after 40. You may find the need for prescription or reading glasses. Many eye issues like presbyopia (long sightedness), glaucoma (increase in eye pressure) and floaters (tiny specks disturbing your vision) are issues that your eyes can become susceptible to as you advance in age. However, you can combat these issues with tratak yoga that is a form of eye exercise, aimed at strengthening your eyes and keeping it healthy.

The word ‘tratak’ means intense concentration or steady attention, on an object. The object could vary from being a thing, a symbol, a thought or the center of your eyebrows. Tratak is basically performed for improving your concentration and focus besides enhancing your eyesight.

In this post, I shall explain how to do tratak to improve your eyes. Ideally, you should do tratak every day for 10 minutes, if you can. I do it during my yoga class every day and I would recommend you do it to liven up your eyes, especially if your job involves sitting in front of a computer throughout the day.

Method : Sit on a mat placed on the floor or a chair, if you prefer Stretch your right arm in front of you with your hands folded into a fist and your thumbs pointing upwards. Fix your gaze on the tip of your thumb for a minute. Then, slowly move your right thumb to the top of your left shoulder and let your eyes follow the tip of your thumb without moving your head. Bring the thumb back to the front with your eyes following the movement.

Now, stretch your left arm in front and point your left thumb upwards. Slowly, move your left thumb to the top of your right shoulder, your eyes following the movement, without turning your head. Bring the thumb back in front of you, your eyes looking at the tip of your thumb all the time.

Now, move the thumb slowly to touch the tip of your nose and cross your eyes to look at it. Then, shift the thumb to the center of your eyebrows, continuing to look at the thumb. After a few seconds, remove your thumb and screw your eyes shut tightly. Rub your palms together vigorously and lightly place the warmth of your palms on your eyes for a few seconds. Remove your palms and open your eyes.

Tratak yoga relaxes your eyes and improves the blood circulation through the eyes, regulating eye pressure and stress on the eyes.

Alternatively, there is another way of exercising your eyes. Click on the video below to view it.